Keep up to date with all things astronomy related with Astronomy Now magazine, which includes the UK's biggest and best night sky guide, an extensive news section, readers' astronomical images, book and equipment reviews, feature articles, a beginners' section and much more. For a sneak preview of this month's issue go to our magazine page.

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Shuttle Movies

The most complete source of video from the countdown, launch and mission of space shuttle Discovery is available here! Spaceflight Now's STS-121 archive includes more than 200 movies you can watch online or download to your computer.Video Collection

Just hours ago, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN set a new world record, achieving proton collisions at seven trillion electron volts, the highest energy ever achieved by a man-made particle accelerator.

British astrophotographer Nick Howes talks to Astronomy Now's Emily Baldwin about his observation that Comet 2007 Q3 (Siding Spring) has split into two, and how he used the Faulkes Telescope to image this dramatic cometary breakup.

A subtle form of gravitational lensing acting on hordes of distant galaxies has provided a triple whammy of independent evidence for not only the strength of dark energy, but also the distribution of dark matter throughout the Universe and the sanctity of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is now equipped with software that allows it to choose its own rocks for further examination, demonstrating the power that future autonomous robotic missions might be able to offer.

Next time you visit Jupiter remember to take an umbrella with you. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered that drops of helium rain, laced with neon, could be falling from the clouds.

A faraway galaxy has been discovered forming stars at a rate of 250 Suns per year in four star-forming nebulae that stretch hundreds of light years across. The discovery bolsters evidence that galaxies formed stars, and therefore grew in size, much more quickly in the past than they do today.

On Wednesday Astronomy Now's Nick Howes revealed images that suggest Comet C2007 Q3 Siding Spring is in the process of breaking up. We can now confirm that this is a fragmentation event, and catch up with Nick after his latest stint on the Faulkes Telescope.

Combining observations from the CoRoT satellite and ground-based ESO HARPS instrument, astronomers have a discovered a 'standard' exoplanet that is set to become the Rosetta stone of exoplanet research.

The latest offering from ESA's Planck satellite reveals giant filaments of cold dust stretching across the Milky Way. The nature of these features could help determine the forces that shape our Galaxy and trigger star formation.

By all rights massive stars should emerge from their nebulous wombs stillborn, as their radiation heats the surrounding gas and stops the star from growing. Now new research has revealed that spiral filaments of gas act as a shield, absorbing the heat of young stars and allowing gas from beyond to continue to fall onto them.

By precisely tracking Cassini's motion during its closest passes of Saturn's moon Titan, scientists have been given an insight into the large moon's internal structure, finding it to be a disorganised mix of rock and ice.

Tumultuous events in a galaxy far, far away are signalling the end of star formation within it, indicating how and why the most massive galaxies in the Universe ceased growing a few billion years after the big bang.

The motion of distant galaxy clusters streaming at a million miles per hour along a path centred on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra has been tracked to twice the distance originally recorded.

Thousands of stars comprising Spitzer's Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) have been used to listen for the 'heartbeat' of the Milky Way in terms of the rate at which our Galaxy is producing new stars.

Dried-up river channels on Mars are some of the best evidence that water once flowed on the surface of the red planet, but new analysis of a channel once thought to have been carved by water shows that it was in fact formed from lava.

Utilising the resolving power of the ten-metre Keck telescope in Hawaii, astronomers from the University of Warwick and Radboud University in the Netherlands have confirmed the existence of a double white dwarf system where the two stars orbit one another every 5.4 minutes.

Significant volumes of buried ice have been discovered in the mid-latitudes of Mars’ northern hemisphere, according to a report presented at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference earlier this week.

Galaxies are often found in groups, interacting with their neighbours, but a recent Hubble Space Telescope image reveals that some galaxies are loners, gobbling up other galaxies that lie in their path.

A howling gale of radiation blowing from a black hole in the spiral galaxy M77 is impacting on star formation despite the black hole’s ‘moderate’ size, according to observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

An omnipresent fog of high energy gamma-ray radiation that bathes the entire Universe is being produced mostly by a mysterious, unknown source, revealed scientists this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s High-Energy Astrophysics Division.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express is set to perform its closest flyby of Phobos tonight. ESA hopes that the data collected by the spacecraft will help solve the origin of Mars’ largest moon.

Using galaxies as giant magnifying lenses, researchers have measured the size and age of the Universe, giving strength to the gravitational lensing technique as one that can provide reliable data on the parameters of the Universe.

Scientists have long believed that the Hotei Regio area on Saturn's murky moon Titan shows signs of ancient cryovolcanism, but have debated over whether there is sufficient evidence to show there is any current activity. Now, data from two sets of instruments onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have been combined to reveal the latest findings.

Stardust, the first unmanned spacecraft to return comet samples to Earth, has been successfully aligned for its second and possibly final mission: to deal with NASA’s unfinished business at comet Tempel 1.

2010 YearbookOur latest 132-page Astronomy Now special edition is an extravaganza of astronomy for the year ahead, with a complete 30-page guide to observing the planets, moon, meteor showers, two solar eclipses, and the deep sky in 2010.U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE

Take the tour!A 100-page special edition from the creators of Astronomy Now magazine, The Grand Tour of the Universe takes readers from one end of the Universe to the other and, in doing so, asks the question "just how big is the Universe?"U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREInfinity RisingThis special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging.U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREGuide to the ConstellationsAstronomy Now presents
this 100-page, full-colour guide to the 68 constellations visible from the British
Isles by Neil Bone, the respected amateur astronomer and writer.U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREExploring MarsAstronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition!U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE